Source: The New Germany desires Work and Peace, pp. 10-14.
By my decree of the 1st February of this year I dissolved the Reichstag in order that the German people might have an opportunity to record its decision concerning the national coalition government formed by me. In the elections of the 5th March our people have placed themselves with a clear majority behind the government which I have summoned by reason of my confidence in them and have thus given them a constitutional mandate to commence their work.
Many and arduous are the tasks which you, Herr Reichskanzler, and you, gentlemen, Members of the Cabinet, have before you. Both in home and foreign politics, in our own household as in the world, there are difficult problems to solve and important decisions to be made. I am convinced that Chancellor and Government will attack these problems with firm determination, and I trust that you, the members of the newly formed Reichstag, will take your stand behind the Government in a full appreciation of the state of affairs and the measures which are necessary, and that you for your part will do all in your power to support the work of the Government.
The place in which we are assembled today summons up memories of the Prussia of former days which became great in the fear of God by devotion to duty, unfailing courage and selfless patriotism, which principles have welded the German peoples into one nation. May the spirit of this hallowed spot inspire the men of today, may it free us from selfish concerns and party strife and join us together in a feeling of devotion to the best of our national traditions and spiritual renewal for the service of a proud, free and united Germany.
With this desire in my heart, I extend my greetings to the Reichstag at the beginning of its new term of office and call upon the Chancellor to address the assembly.
Herr Reichsprasident, Members of the German Reichstag,
For years our people has been oppressed by care.
After a period of prosperity and progress when every branch of our national life flourished, we have fallen once more — as so often in the past — upon times of misery and want.
Millions of Germans are seeking in vain their daily bread, in spite of industry and the will to work, and in spite of ability, knowledge and experience. Business is at a standstill, finance in ruins and millions are without work.
The world sees our cities only from the outside, and knows nothing of the misery which is under the surface.
Ever changing has been the lot of our nation for two thousand years, a rise has always been followed by a fall. The causes have always been the same. The German, restless and distraught, at war within himself and ignorant of what he really desires, sinks into a state of coma. He dreams of justice in the stars and loses his contact with reality.
The more nation and country fall into decay and national life grows weaker, the more have men sought in all times to make a virtue of necessity. The theory of the individual value of our tribes hid from view the fact that cooperation was a vital necessity. Ultimately there was only one way left for the German, the way within. As a nation of poets and thinkers, they dreamed then of the better world in which the others lived, and only when need and suffering had rained their heaviest blows upon them did there arise, perhaps out of their art, the longing for a period of revival, for a new Reich and, at the same time, for a new life.
When Bismarck steered the cultural aspirations of the German nation into the channels of national unity, the long period of misery and internal strife seemed for ever ended. Obedient to the spirit of the proclamation of the Empire, our nation played its part in the revival of prosperity, of culture and moral standards. Its consciousness of its own strength has always been inseparably bound up with its feeling of responsibility for cooperation among the European nations.
It was during this time of growing national solidarity of the German peoples that our nation began to lose, its sense of political perspective, and under this loss we are suffering today.
This inner decay it was which played once more, as so often before, into the hands of the world around us. The revolution of November 1918 ended a conflict into which the German nation had been drawn in the most sacred conviction that it was but protecting its liberty and its right to live.
The Myth of Germany's War Guilt.
Neither the Kaiser nor the Government nor the nation wanted this war. It was only the collapse of our nation which compelled a weakened race to take upon itself, against its most sacred convictions, the guilt for this war.
This collapse, however, was followed by the disintegration of our entire life. Politically, morally, culturally and economically, our nation sank deeper and deeper into the morass.
Worst of all was the deliberate annihilation of our faith in our own strength, the soiling of our traditions and the destruction of the very roots of our belief in ourselves.
Since then, crisis after crisis has shaken our nation to its very foundations.
But the rest of the world has not been made any happier or richer by this severing of a politically and economically important limb from the body corporate. Out of the insane theory of a permanent status of victors and vanquished arose the folly of reparations and, as a result, the breakdown of the entire economic system of the world.
While the German nation and the German Reich were thus sinking into the bog of inner political strife and economic ruin, a small group of Germans was beginning to come forward which had not lost faith in the nation and was determined to weld it once more into a united entity.
It is to this young Germany that you, Herr Generalfeldmarschall, magnanimously entrusted, on the 30th January 1933, the leadership of the nation.
The Appeal to the Nation.
In the conviction that the German people was bound to give its approval to the new order of things in Germany, we of this National Government made a final appeal to the nation.
On the 5th March the people decided with a majority in our favour. Rising as never before, it has in a few weeks restored the national honour, and, thanks to your clear judgment, Herr Reichspräsident, has united the symbol of past greatness to that of the strength and vitality of youth.
In this solemn hour the National Government faces the Reichstag for the first time and proclaims its unshakeable determination to undertake the reorganisation of the German Reich and nation, and to carry it through successfully.
The National Government, conscious that they have the will of the nation behind them, demands from the parties and the representatives of the nation that, after fifteen years of misery in Germany, they raise themselves above the doctrinaire conceptions of party politics and recognize the inevitable necessity of cooperation which has been laid upon us by the needs of the times and their threatening consequences.
The task, which fate has demanded that we fulfil, makes it our bounden duty to rise high above the petty considerations of everyday party politics.
We are determined to restore once more unity of spirit and of determination to our people.
We are determined to protect the eternal foundations of our national life, the strength and the virtues which are our birthright.
We are determined to raise once more to the guiding principles of organisation and government those ideas without which no nation and no country can rise to greatness.
We are determined to combine trust in the sound and natural instincts of life with a steady development of inner and foreign policy.
We are determined to constitute a government which, instead of constantly wavering from side to side, shall be firm and purposeful, and restore to our people a source of unshakeable authority.
We are determined to profit from all those experiences which in past centuries have proved of value to mankind, politically and economically, both to the individual and to the community.
We are determined to restore politics to that level which shall enable them to act as the reorganizing and guiding principles of national life.
We are determined to make use of all the truly vital forces in the nation which shall serve to ensure the future of Germany, to gather together all men of good will under our banner, and to deprive those who wish to harm our nation of the power to do so.
We are determined to create a new community out of the German peoples — a community formed of men of every status and profession and of every so-called class, which shall be able to achieve that community of interests which the welfare of the entire nation demands. All classes must be welded together into a single German nation.
This nation shall take under its protection for all time our faith and our culture, our honour and our freedom.
In our relations to the world we wish, having clearly before our eyes the sacrifices of the War, to be the champions of a peace which shall finally heal those wounds from which all are suffering.
The Government of the national renaissance is determined to fulfil the task which they have undertaken before the German nation. They stand today before the German Reichstag with the earnest desire to receive from it the support necessary for the fulfilling of their mission. May you, the elected representatives of the nation, recognise the meaning of this epoch and join with us in the great work of national restoration.
Hindenburg as symbol.
There is among us today a grand old man. We rise to salute you, Herr Generalfeldmarschall.
Three times you have fought on the field of honour for the existence and the future of our nation.
As lieutenant in the army of the King of Prussia, you fought for the unity of Germany; under him who afterwards became the first German Kaiser you fought for the glorious founding of the German Empire and, as our supreme leader, you fought in the greatest war of all time for the existence of the Reich and for the freedom of our people.
You were present when the German Empire came into being, you beheld the work of the Great Chancellor, the glorious rise of our nation, and you have led us in those momentous times in which fate has allowed us to play our part.
Hindenburg, the Patron of the National Renaissance.
Providence has willed it, Herr Generalfeldmarschall, that you should be present here today as the patron of the renaissance of our nation. Your marvellous career is a symbol for us all of the indestructible forces which are latent in the German nation. The youth of Germany and, indeed, the whole nation is filled with gratitude to you that you have lent your approval and given your blessing to the rehabilitation of the German nation. May these forces give strength also to the newly elected representatives of the people.
May Providence at the same time grant us that courage and perseverance of which this spot, hallowed for every German, reminds as and give us who stand here at the tomb of our greatest monarch the strength to fight for the freedom and greatness of our people.